ATI + Linux

[surak]

Due to the known problems with Linux ATI drivers, we have updated the launcher to disable shader support if an ATI card is detected.

This will remain this way until drivers are fixed. Sadly, we can only wait.

Game should work know for ATI users without safe-mode.

Regards.

[Myxir]

Cool! :)
btw: it worked for me since the last updates, too.
Will we have any graphical disadvantages now?
Surak you rock :clapclap:

[surak]

Cool! :)
btw: it worked for me since the last updates, too.
Will we have any graphical disadvantages now?
Surak you rock :clapclap:

Postprocess, water reflections, and that cool shiny effects on armors will not work.

[Angelwinged_Devil]

Postprocess, water reflections, and that cool shiny effects on armors will not work.
haha, sorry for my humor but that kinda ruined it :p
on behalf of all the ati users in my clan I'd like to say thanks for disabling it :D. Hmm are you able to disable this in the cfg?

[DuoMaxwell]

But what about those that have a more current card with the more halfway decent divers, the problems appear to be with the older cards, and older drivers, I'd think someone with an x1900xt with the current drivers would have better luck then someone trying to run an older pre "x" series card or those trying to run it on the IGPs like the xPress200?

Also didn't someone say that they actually got decent preformance from the recent release of Mesa 3D driver 7.0.1 the older cards, I hadn't really followed this project so I don't know much of it's progress yet, just something I read here.

So is this an off by defaullt but something you can opt into should the card be wrking right by having to do no more the hit a checkbox?

[surak]

We must do a little more research, but for now, I prefer everyone can play the game without crashing :)

[Myxir]

We must do a little more research, but for now, I prefer everyone can play the game without crashing :)

Yes that's good.
I got one question. (I have ATI X550)
Is it only a personal impression that regnum seems to run more fluently since the last client-update or is it possible that it's like this? It feels more fluently but the FPS remain the same if i remember it correctly.

[surak]

This is not the first time I hear that... I guess some of the minor engine optimizations are starting to be noticed :)

[Myxir]

Thanks, keep up the good work! :)

[MAXDDARK]

THANKS A LOT SURAK !!!
at last I can play in normal mode.

tell me please, the anti aliasing and the anistropic filter are working for us now in Linux+ATI ?

[surak]

THANKS A LOT SURAK !!!
at last I can play in normal mode.

tell me please, the anti aliasing and the anistropic filter are working for us now in Linux+ATI ?

Yes. Everything should work, except shader support :(

[DuoMaxwell]

Surak, didn't someone offer to send you some ATI cards free of charge and free of shipping, least thats what I had heard, what has become of this? But also with the AMD and ATI logos on your game, why hasn't AMD provided you with a few cards to test with? For them its free advertisement unless they funded you in cash only, which also doesn't make much sence since if they where funding you you'd think they give you some parts and a little documentation to help you support their parts better.

Either way tho keep up the great work, you've done tons of work for us penguin pushers already.

[surak]

We have some ATI cards... but until they improve the drivers there is not much we can do. Last time I tested, their OpenGL shader compiler crashed in almost every shader Regnum has :(

[Holokauston]

yeah ATi drivers for linux are lacking, in some areas lacking alot and ATi are working on it.
it's to bad that (afaik) r300+ DRI isn't capable of opengl2.0 yet :( otherwise the Mesa drivers with DRI ect. would have been an alternative.

Hopefully ATi's comming releases will be better or the manage to make r300 opengl2.0 capable.

[Myxir]

I believe in ATI... They will do it. They rock... except the drivers. But i think they manage to improve or better open them.

[DuoMaxwell]

If I remember right you can still get OGL2 on these cards, but only through a much slower software render, the cards themselves where only made to support a certain version and under of OGL, same with DX9, while some games you can install on older cards even tho they say you need a DX9 card is because the game was written in a way that it could ct out features that aren't supported by your card. That ofcourse means that you aren't seeing all you should be able to see in the game tho.

OpenGL and Direct3D are nothing more then instruction sets, not unlike MMX, SSE, 3DNow! etc instrction sets in your comps CPU, the code written to take advantage of them, should be there will be much faster then code that isn't optimized to take advantage of these. Tho with most software it's usually a few years before they support new instrction sets as it takes a while for them to be in most comps being used at the time.

[DuoMaxwell]

I believe in ATI... They will do it. They rock... except the drivers. But i think they manage to improve or better open them.

ATI currently doesn't rock, they haven't been ahead for a few years now and their mid and low end R600 cards are very sub standard even when compared to the nvidia 8600 and down cards.

The HD2600XT is about as fast as the 8600GT, but it costs 1.5-2x as much and it does not keep up with the older ATI cards at all. The ATI cards also have trouble handling being OCed as far as nvidia cards, this is a factor for many ppl.

the R700 looks promising tho, it'll be multicore, multigpu, so ATI can put one chip in the bottom of the line or 16 in the top of the line and brute force their way to the top while nvidia is sticking to the single core GPU.

Now tho, this could change overnight if AMD opensourced the ATI drivers like they said they would. I'd never again support nvidia till they did the same. But as it stands now ATI on linux isn't worth the time or money for more exspensive and often slower cards.

Again, benchmarks don't lie, http://bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/08/20/his_radeon_hd_2600_xt_iceq_turbo_gddr3_/

Reviews the ATI X1650XT vs. HD2600XT GDDR3 vs. HD2600XT GDDR4 vs. X1950 Pro vs. X1950XT vs. the nvidia 7600GT vs. 7900GS vs. 8600GT vs. 8600GTS

All should be able to play regnum well yes, but is the hastle with the bad drivers worth it?

[Holokauston]

the sad fact is that AMD never said they would make the ATi drivers open source =(
they implyed the current groups that had been given the old source code would get more and that they would renew and maintain a active relationship with the open source community.

Richard, AMD’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, promised: “I’m here to commit to you that it’s going to get done.” He also promised that AMD is “going to be very proactive in changing way we interface with the Linux community.”

How ever the Richards has now steped down from his post and nothing has happened in that regard afaik, sad but they never said they would make the drivers open source, that was just a interpretation made by someone that then got a life of it's own :(

More info from the FAQ at ati.amd.com

Q4: Is complete driver source code available?
A4: Some of the technologies supported in our driver are protected by non-disclosure agreements with third parties, so we cannot legally release the complete source code to our driver. It is NOT open source. We do, however, include source code for the control panel and certain other public segments. We also actively assist developers in the Open Source community with their work, so if you absolutely require an open source driver for your graphics card, we can recommend using drivers from the DRI project, Utah-GLX project, or others.

[DuoMaxwell]

I'm just surprised that noone has done like they did with th dvd codecs and whatnot yet, it's illegal to install them in the US, but they exist and everyone does, ATI/AMD have little to lose and much to gain from having competent opensource drivers out there. Much of this is due to the AVIVO tech that ATI uses for video playback accelration, most all of which isn't supported at all on non OS X or Windows systems, and some of which is prolly the work of microsoft for their precious DX3D, should someone figure out how to impliment it correctly on OGL then who needs windows?

That damn pirate OS Linux, the only ones that use it are music and movie theives that copy videogames and return the disc to the store...

I'm tired of being a 2nd class citizen for just cause I run linux, and most companies need to realize that the copyrights they and other companies are prolly costing them far more in the long run then they potentially save by locking everything down and praying that noone is smart enough to figre it out.

Hey, if that 80+ million dollar australian porn filter was cracked in half an hour by some kid then if you get a few ppl motivated with the right skills they should be able to figure out the ATI drivers. Unfortunatly linux gaming doesn't have the same motivational power as porn does to a 15 y/o wneh they can just dl and install XP to play.

[MAXDDARK]

I've heard that NVIDIA drivers are closed too, however they do release a good drivers for Linux.

DuoMaxwell I didn't get your comment :
"That damn pirate OS Linux, the only ones that use it are music and movie theives that copy videogames and return the disc to the store..."

[DuoMaxwell]

heh, it's cause of the extreme imporbability of going to the store and finding a linux version of anything, the RIAA, MPAA and the gaming industry equvilent of them seeing linux as a pirate's OS that should be banned, just look at that kid thats now forced to run windows if he ever wants to use a comp because of a court order http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/08/23/190238.shtml

The worst part of it is that when we do get spported by sometihng it's always lacking, even nvidia, while having stable drivers for their cards for us don't bother to support the majority of the card's features, if you remember flash, how long was it before they updated flash for linux after the release of the Windows and OS X clients? These aren't the only bits of commercial software, these are just 2 of the most widly used ones. There are many others we get gipped on.

Am I the onle only one that remembers when Blizzard killed all the accounts of ppl playing WoW under cedega? Even tho they knew full well that they had sevral thousand doing so.

As for the other rant, linux users should stand up and do some more things for themselves as well, I'm also a Mac user, usually when someone shorts Mac users they start working at making thier own version of things, the just never needd graphics drivers, ATI was good to Mac users spporting us with cards that supported Macs natively, but there where always at least 2x as exspensive, so they never sold, what we opted to do instead was find exact refrence models, same as apple used and would have to create a custom half sized firmware flash to replace the card bios, risky yes, but saving 50-70% on the card was worth it to flash the card with the bennifit of being able to choose the best card that Apple had drivers for in the OS. This is still used today with PMac G5 and MacPro owners, the car you want not enough for you? want a 7800GT like was offered as BTO from apple but couldn't afford it when they came out with the dual core G5s? get the AGP 7800GS from BFG, its the same graphics core as the 7800GT, just for AGP instead of PCIe, works jst fine and screams on OSX once you flash it.

[surak]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=821&num=1

Let's wait and see....

[MAXDDARK]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=821&num=1

Let's wait and see....


They talk about the R serieses drivers.
will it also improve the Radeon 9800Pro drivers ?
currently the game is almost unplayable since the last update which should have fixed it. (by disabling the shader support).

[DuoMaxwell]

They talk about the R serieses drivers.
will it also improve the Radeon 9800Pro drivers ?
currently the game is almost unplayable since the last update which should have fixed it. (by disabling the shader support).

If phoronix is right for once then you may infact be in luck, the 9800 Pro is part of the R300 series. Anyone with an R200 card is still SoL tho.

[Comp]

AMD just announced today that they are going to be releasing a new ATI driver specifically for linux.

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1328225&from=rss

[Myxir]

AMD just announced today that they are going to be releasing a new ATI driver specifically for linux.

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/1328225&from=rss

And a news from the kernel summit:
http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/

The drivers WILL rock if AMD does what they say.

[toxigenicpoem]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=821&num=1

Let's wait and see....


Does that mean you'll be testing the shader support right away!? If it works when can we expect to see an updated launcher!?

[surak]

Launcher has been updated to not overwrite the setting that disables shader support.

Whoever want to test shaders with the latest ATI drivers should change (in the file game.cfg) the line "dbg_disable_shaders = 1" to "dbg_disable_shaders = 0" and test if they work :)

Post your success/failures here :D

[_Enio_]

post process "failure":
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/2351/screenshot2007112218483tv3.jpg

(Ati x600 mobility with latest (i hope) ati drivers..)

What else can i activate now?